“What, Poppy?” Rebecca asked.
“That’s what they were playing on the radio his boy brought along. ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You.’”
“Whoa! Sorry if we disturbed you,” J.J. said.
“Oh, it’s better than some others I’ve heard.”
He held the portrait out to Rebecca, and she stepped forward to take it from him.
“So! Mr. Davitch!” Aunt Ida said. “Did you receive a birthday greeting from the President?”
Poppy sent another frown in the direction of the portrait, which Rebecca was propping now on the chest of drawers. Perhaps he thought McKinley was the President in question. Instead of answering, though, he said, “Mr., ah, J.J., I wonder if you could settle a little argument for me.”
“Be glad to if I can,” J.J. told him.
“Those instant-on kind of lights. What do you call them? You know the kind. The ones that light up without blinking first.”
“Incandescent,” J.J. said.
“Now, I maintain that folks should turn those off whenever they leave a room. Because switching them back on doesn’t require any particular burst of energy, does it? As opposed to a fluorescent. But Beck, here: oh, no, she has to leave a trail of lights lit anyplace she goes. A waste of money, I tell her.”
“Yes, sir, you’d be amazed,” J.J. said. “Why, a single hundred-watt bulb, left burning for an hour—”
“J.J.! Don’t encourage him!” Rebecca said. “Poppy’d have us sitting in the dark, if he could have his way. Even the tree lights upset him! If we were to leave this room right now, just to go to the dining room and get ourselves a bite, he would turn off the tree lights first!”
“Oh,” J.J. said. He looked unhappy. No doubt he felt he’d been put on the spot. “Welclass="underline" tree lights. I mean, these dinky white things are not a major draw of power. And you have to figure the, like, decorative effect. They’re more of a decoration, for people to see from outside too and not just inside the house.”
“See there?” Rebecca asked Poppy. “Didn’t I tell you? Oh, lights have a tremendous effect!” she said, turning to the others. “Like when guests are walking up the front walk for a party: it makes such a difference in their mood if they see all the windows glowing. They get… anticipatory. Switch on every light you own, I always say. Let them blaze for all they’re worth! Let them set the house on fire!”
J.J. laughed, and his son grinned shyly. Aunt Ida said, “Yes, you would certainly want to give people a nice sense of welcome.” Poppy, though, only grunted, and Rebecca’s mother shrank back slightly in her seat.
“Well, anyhow,” Rebecca said after a moment. “Drinks, anyone?” And she was careful to keep her voice at a decorous pitch.
* * *
It was so predictable that non-Davitches would show up before Davitches. Precisely fifteen minutes past the designated hour — Baltimore’s idea of the proper arrival time — Alice Farmer rang the doorbell in a silver sharkskin suit and silver shoes and a black felt cartwheel hat, bearing a stunningly wrapped gift that turned out to be a prayer toaster. (A prayer on a bread-slice-shaped piece of cardboard popped out of the slot if you pressed the lever, one prayer for every day of the year.) The physical therapist, Miss Nancy, followed with a flock of Mylar balloons so numerous that they had to be nudged through the door in clusters. Next came Poppy’s two friends, Mr. Ames and Mr. Hardesty. Mr. Ames brought a cactus with a bulbous pink growth on top that Poppy said reminded him of a baboon’s behind. Mr. Hardesty brought nothing, which was understandable because he was in a walker for which he needed both hands, besides having to rely on a sullen niece for his shopping; so Poppy was gracious about it.
At a quarter till three the first Davitch arrived: Zeb, short of breath. “Sorry,” he told Rebecca. “There was an emergency call from the hospital, and I went off thinking I’d come straight here afterwards, but I forgot about the gift; so I had to go back home first and get it.”
He meant the gift that he and she were giving jointly: a framed reprint of Poppy and Aunt Joyce’s engagement photo. He had bundled it clumsily in wads of white tissue and masses of Scotch tape. “I wish you could have seen it before I wrapped it,” he told her. “They did a tremendous job with the restoration.”
“Well, that’s a relief,” Rebecca said. She had been dubious when she first slipped it, stealthily, from the family album. Blooms of mold had destroyed most of the background, and a white fold line ran across one corner.
Poppy was getting rowdy, like an overstimulated child. “Well? What have we here?” he asked as Zeb entered the room. “Bring it on in! Let me at it!”
“Happy birthday,” Zeb told him, and he laid the package across Poppy’s knees. “This is from Rebecca and me.”
“Well, thank you. Not much sense in saving this wrap, I don’t believe.” He ripped the tissue off one end and tugged the picture free. “Oh, my,” he said.
Zeb was right: the restorers had worked a miracle. The background was unblemished now, and the couple seemed somehow more alive. Aunt Joyce, slimmer than Rebecca had ever seen her, wore one of those drapey 1930s dresses that appeared to have been snatched up at the midriff and given a violent twist. Poppy was startlingly black-haired and black-mustached, and he gazed out at the viewer while Joyce had eyes only for him.
“Isn’t it amazing?” Poppy asked Rebecca. She thought he meant the restoration, until he went on. “There I am, watching the camera when I could have been looking at Joyce. I thought I had the rest of my life to look at Joyce, was why. I was thirty-nine years old. She was twenty-two. I thought she would outlive me.”
“Oh, if that is not the truth!” Aunt Ida cried from the couch.
Rebecca’s mother said, “Now, correct me if I’m wrong, Mr. Davitch, but wasn’t I once told that your wife had always had a weak heart?”
“Weak hearts ran in her family,” Poppy said. “But I never really believed that she would go first.”
“Well, anyways, she sure was pretty,” Alice Farmer said. She had crossed the room to peer over Poppy’s shoulder. “How’d a plain old guy like you come to catch such a pretty young thing?”
“She used to work behind the pastry counter at her mother’s breakfast place,” Poppy said. “Finally her mother switched her to dishing out bacon and eggs, just so I’d eat more nutritiously.”
“Very considerate of her,” Miss Nancy said heartily, and J.J. chuckled, but Poppy just stared at the photo as if he hadn’t heard.
Then the door slammed against the closet, and he straightened and said, “Ah, well.”
First came NoNo with a sweater she’d been laboring over for months — a bulky white fisherman’s knit, not really Poppy’s style. He was nice about it, though. “You made this?” he asked her. “You hate to knit! You swore you’d give it up after you finished those baby booties.”
“Well, this time I will give it up, I promise,” NoNo said, and she bent to kiss his cheek.
Peter shook Poppy’s hand and said, “I’m supposed to tell you happy birthday, and that me and the other kids are going in on one big present from the bunch of us.”
“Well, that’s all right, then,” Poppy decided.
Peter was wearing his school blazer, the sleeves a good inch shorter than the last time Rebecca had seen him in it. It matched J.J.J.’s, she realized. They must go to the same school, for they seemed to know each other. J.J.J. made room for him on the couch, and they put their heads together over some kind of gadget that Peter pulled from his pocket. “I think the way I can get it to work is by differential friction,” Rebecca heard him say.
Biddy arrived with still more pastry boxes — having brought most of the food earlier that morning — and headed for the kitchen, followed by Dixon, who first set a wooden keg just inside the front door. Troy, however, came straight into the parlor to hand Poppy a small, flat package. “Your old friend Haydn,” he explained. “Biddy’s gift is the food, but I wanted you to have something especially from me.”